


Habituation

by echoist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, M/M, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-06
Updated: 2010-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys return from a meeting with Death, and Crowley settles his accounts with Bobby Singer.  A more or less direct follow up to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/84651">Eisegesis</a>, which is shorter and also a good bit funnier.  Both of these fics are entirely dependent upon the CW preview for 5.21, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWRRhFZboyk">here</a>, and are completely AU now that the relevant episode has aired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Habituation

                Bobby glanced up at the sound of booted feet thumping loudly up his front steps, noting their uneven gait across the creaking boards.  Opening the bottom desk drawer, he withdrew an unopened bottle of Jack, and started towards the corner cabinet for glasses.  He paused, hands resting lightly on cold metal; might as well see how many feet came through his door, first.

                He’d sent four pairs of them off; how many would be coming back?

                The door slammed open, rocking back on its hinges to careen into the wall.  “Hey, you nitwits –“ he shouted indignantly into the hallway before his eyes had quite caught up to his mouth.  Sam staggered into the living room, hands clutched about his midsection, make-shift bandages leaking blood down his jeans.  He stumbled forward, supported awkwardly on either side by his brother and the angel, both somewhat the worse for wear.  _Team Free Will at its finest, _Bobby thought bitterly.  A gash split Dean’s forehead, the dark smear of blood dripping down into his left eye.  Castiel was filthy, his trench coat singed, right arm hanging uselessly down.  A thin stream of red fluid dripped from limp fingers onto the rug as he lowered Sam onto the couch.

                “Is your coat still smoking?” Bobby asked, eyeing the angel warily.Castiel, entirely focused on arranging the pillows around Sam’s garbled protests, offered only a terse nod.Dean said nothing, disappearing into the kitchen to rummage through his cabinets like a frantic burglar.The angel remained sentinel beside the couch, silent and unmoving, eyes blazing down to the figure huddled against the threadbare frame.“Sam?” Bobby questioned, hesitant to disturb the manic calm.It was the efficient silence of a foxhole, a trench; not the lingering, bowel-smelling emptiness of death.




                A grunt of pain was the boy’s only response, but it was enough to let Bobby’s lungs flood with welcome air.  Castiel cocked his head to the side, pulling his overgrown sparrow routine, and answered, “Sam will live.  His wounds are not fatal, though they are quite severe.”

                Bobby let out a long, whistling breath.  “What happened to you knuckleheads out there?”  Dean stalked back in from the kitchen, arms full of fresh bandages, alcohol, and a tin first-aid kid that Bobby vaguely remembered from grade school.  “Seriously, how do you not restock for the apocalypse?” he grumbled, kneeling beside the arm of the couch and nudging the angel aside with his shoulder.  Castiel shifted no more than an inch and remained, looming over Dean’s shoulder as he lifted a stiff patch of flannel away from his brother’s wounds.

                “You got any peroxide?” Dean threw over his shoulder at Bobby over Sam’s incoherent mumblings.  His hands struggled weakly against his brother’s efforts, half-delirious from pain and loss of blood.  “Yeah,” Bobby muttered, and wheeled out from around the desk, necessity overriding the sudden shock of concern. 

               “I’ll get it.”  The soft drawl floated in from the hallway, through the still-open doorway, and brought Bobby to a halt in the middle of the corridor.  “You mind the boy.”  Bobby stopped, staring out onto the porch.  “Son of a bitch,” he swore, watching the electric light grant the demon a flickering, 60-watt halo.

                “You leave my sainted mother out of this,”  Crowley admonished.  “I’m shocked that you didn’t miss me in my absence.  That’s gratitude for you, I suppose.  More to the point, where’d you leave the bleach last time you needed to sterilize something filthy? ”  Crowley’s lips curled around the words, improbably suggestive.   Bobby blinked, his mind attempting to reconcile the clusterfuck in his living room with the smarmy flirtations of the demon on his doorstep.  “I can get it,” he said flatly, eyes narrowing.

                “Bit tetchy today, aren’t we?” The demon mused, a slight smile drawing up his mouth at one corner.  His eyes remained expressionless as he muttered under his breath, “Should’ve figured you out for a chav early on."

                Bobby shook his head, rolling past him with a muffled curse.   “Whatever the hell that means.  In or out?”  Crowley tilted his head, annoyance blooming into perverse delight.  “I thought you’d never ask,” he tossed out, crossing the threshold.  “Stop blabbering and close the goddamn door before you let in any more mosquitoes," Bobby muttered.  "Damn bloodsuckers.”  Crowley heard the echoing smack of an insect meeting its demise on the hunter’s skin.  A cabinet door rattled out of sight, then slammed shut with another finely tuned curse as the demon waited.

                 Bobby rolled angrily back into view, persistent stream of vulgarities now peppered with Latin and Greek.  “Ooh,” Crowley offered approvingly.  “That’s a good one.  Creative.  Might have to use that one myself.” 




                “Bottle of peroxide under the sink in the upstairs bathroom,” he said as he pulled level with the demon, nodding his head towards the staircase.  “Make yourself useful,  Limey.  Loafing around with our thumbs up our asses ain’t gonna stop Sam from bleeding out on my couch.”  

                The demon quirked an eyebrow hopefully.  “Right, plenty of time for that later,”  he suggested, brushing past the hunter in the narrow space.  Bobby threw up his hands in mock defeat.  “Forget talking to you,” he muttered, heading back towards the carnage. 

                Two nerve wracking hours of sterilizing and stitching passed before the night saw Sam resting more or less comfortably on the couch, still in no condition to be moved.  Dean sprawled, boneless, in an upholstered chair he had dragged right to the edge of the cushions, eyelids at half mast while he watched his brother breathe.  Castiel perched precariously on the arm, gaze flicking back and forth between the boys like an agitated cat might move its tail.  Crouched on the floor for most of the evening, Dean had explained, in laconic, half-growled fragments, that Death had indeed been precisely where Crowley had divined – accompanied by a baker’s dozen of hastily possessed thugs.  Castiel’s thousand yard stare left Sam for perhaps ten entire seconds to refocus on Bobby,  expression stuck between mournful and reproving at the very mention of his dubious transaction.  He’d opened his rust-stained palm to reveal a horrid lump of twisted metal, pitted and scarred beyond recognition.  Bobby supposed it must’ve once been a ring. 

                “Wasn’t his fault a Horseman was smart enough to bring backup,” Bobby heard himself say, tips of his ears gone the color of ghost chiles when the words registered as his own.  “What, you’re defending the guy now?” Dean asked without looking up, voice brimming with stock Winchester disbelief as his hands stitched a neat row alongside Sam’s navel.  “No,” Bobby threw back, and _what are you, eight?_ he asked himself.  “Just sayin’.  You knew what you were up against, or you damn well should have.”   He tried not to look at the bloody rags discarded in scattered piles as he wheeled past the solemn gathering into the kitchen; tried not to weigh the potential sacrifice in his mind.  Just because an idea was unthinkable didn’t mean it couldn’t – or wouldn’t – come to pass.

                Not like the Devil would have let the poor boy stay dead, anyway, if that had been how it all fell out.  _Speaking of devils, _Bobby thought,  and lobbed a question at the elephant in the room.  “What are you still doing, here, anyway?”  Crowley smiled, leaning his head against the doorframe in what seemed to be his favorite place to stand, and Bobby hastily regretted asking.  Another half second and he added the ability to point out a demon’s preferred spot to loiter in his home to what seemed to be a growing list of regrets.

                “Not like I’ve got anywhere else to be, now is there?”  The demon answered smartly.  “I believe I mentioned the slight inconvenience of having my house burned down by Satan.” 

                “Oh, maybe once or twice,” Bobby answered, padding his words with all the annoyance he thought he should have felt.  “What I don’t remember is saying you could park your lazy behind here while you magic yourself up a new mansion.”

                “I’m afraid it’s not so simple as that,” Crowley said with a slight wince.  “This gorgeous mug doesn’t open _every _door, you know.”  Bobby snorted and Crowley managed to look offended before continuing on with his diatribe.  It sounded rehearsed.  “Sometimes I’ve got to go through the same channels as any common bloke, which means getting up close and personal with _realtors.  _And bankers, ugh.”  He shuddered uncomfortably.  “And you lot think that demons are evil,” he added, adjusting his collar.  Bobby frowned, his expression not difficult to read. 

                “Not to mention,” Crowley switched gears, glancing somewhere over Bobby’s head.  “We’ve an unfinished transaction, you and I.  Only I thought you might appreciate it if I waited until the children had gone to bed.”

                Bobby blanched.  “I knew it,” he muttered.  “Decided to collect on my soul after all, have you?”  The demon actually pouted.  “Collect?” Crowley questioned, his tone asking quite succinctly, _are you daft?_  “More like return; I don’t need to keep carrying around the extra weight.  Think it’s making me look a bit paunchy.”  

                “You mean to tell me you’ve got my soul – in there?” Bobby gestured vaguely in the direction of Crowley, and the demon sighed.  “Not all of it, you twit.  What _are_ they teaching hunters these days?”  Bobby looked flummoxed, and the demon condescended to explain.  “I just needed a bit of it to power the location spell, not so much as to leave you in a coma.  Now that’s over and done with, I’m dying to get rid of the damn thing.  It’s – it’s itchy.”

              Bobby laughed – actually laughed, and the demon shot him a withering look.  “Well, let’s get on with it then.”  Crowley glanced toward the living room, watched Castiel shift from the arm of the couch to the arm of Dean’s chair; in short, shifting which Winchester he was currently hovering over.  The demon made a face.  “Regular litter of puppies, they are.”




                “Yeah, you’re telling me,” Bobby agreed, grabbing the bottle of whiskey off the counter and propelling himself toward the front hall.  “Get a couple of glasses, would ya?  If this is anything like the last time, I’m gonna need a drink.”  A slow smile worked its way along Crowley’s lips; he could appreciate a practical man. 

                Following the hunter out to the front porch, he pulled up a chair beside the wheels and set two pilfered glass tumblers on the railing.  “You want a drink of that rotgut before, or after?” The demon asked smugly, already reaching for the bottle.  “Yes,” Bobby answered, handing it over.  Crowley poured them each two fingers worth and watched his companion knock it back in a single gulp, raising an eyebrow.  “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

                “Just give me my goddamned soul back, you overgrown leech,” Bobby answered gruffly.  “If you insist,” Crowley answered, leaning across the space to cup the hunter’s face gently in his hand, stroking his cheek with his thumb.  Eyes squeezed shut, Bobby didn’t see the strange smile that lit the demon’s face before he brought their lips together, or the second hand that rose to slip the cap from off his head, gliding down to rest against his neck and hold him there.  Might not have noticed, anyway, as the taste of smoke and cinnamon mingled with the whiskey on his tongue and lingered, even as he did, a moment too long.   

               “You sure that worked?” Bobby asked, opening his eyes just a crack.  The demon hadn’t moved, soft hands still holding him near, and “I don’t feel any different,” he added.  “Tch,” the demon scoffed, eying him up and down.  “I must be slipping.”

               “Could you focus?” Bobby admonished, leaning away.  “We’re only talking about a guy’s _soul _here.”

               “Not even half a soul, small potatoes, really.”  Crowley assured him.  “Besides, I hadn’t exactly got round to that part, yet.”  Bobby spilled a shot of whiskey over the side of his glass. 

               “Hadn’t gotten around to it?” Bobby repeated, raising his voice.  “What in the hell did you think you were doing?”  Crowley curved his lips into a leer that would have shamed even Dean Winchester, and Bobby set the bottle down with an angry thunk.  “Now look here,” he started in, quite adorably furious, Crowley thought, and he nearly let him finish.  Nearly.

               A crack of thunder split the night, edging closer to early morning, and a sudden wind picked up to stir the trees.  This time, when the demon’s lips met his, there was no hint of playfulness, only the shock of electricity across his skin and the fierce stench of ozone in its wake.  Bobby gagged, choking on a hideous rush of smoke and fell back against his chair, effectively silenced.  Something squirmed in his chest, wet and alien beneath his ribs and he fought to keep the whiskey down.

               Crowley glanced over the hunter’s shoulder and winked.  Turning around as far as he could manage, Bobby saw the living room curtain fall abruptly back into place and stared, horrified, at the shadow behind it.  “Just the angel,” Crowley said dismissively.  “What’s he gonna do about it, eh?  You’re soul’s back in one piece, safe and sound.  Just as I promised.”

               Bobby grunted and downed another glass of whiskey.  “Hmm,” the demon mused.  “That’s a bit odd, though.”  The hunter looked up warily.  “What now?” he asked, as though he’d rather hear anything else than the answer to his own question.

               “Nah,” Crowley answered, watching the faint glimmer across the hunter’s aura as the soul fragment wrapped itself back up in its original packaging.  “Nothing worth mentioning.”  And it wasn’t, not really, he rationalized, raising the untouched glass of whiskey to his lips.  Just one ounce less he had to cart around, and these blasted meat suits were heavy enough already.  Certainly nothing he would miss.

               “Thought you were too good for my brand of forgetfulness,” Bobby spoke up, watching the demon take a long, slow sip from the tumbler.  Crowley swallowed and licked the last drop of liquid fire from the corner of his mouth.  “It seems to be an acquired taste,” he replied, holding out his empty glass while the hunter refilled it.  The sky lightened from the black certainty of pitch to a hesitant, creeping violet as they sat in silence, waiting for a dawn that might bring with it the end.

 


End file.
